


Ellie's Journal

by pocketbrows



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: CHARACTER BACKSTORY BECAUSE ELLIE IS SMOL AND IMPORTANT AND DESERVES IT, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 14:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7319647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketbrows/pseuds/pocketbrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellie decided to write her life story in a journal that Nick got her. This is her first entry - detailing her childhood and how she came to know the synth detective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ellie's Journal

March 11th, 2277

I’ve had this journal for a long time, since Nick gave it to me for… what, my 14th birthday? I never wanted to use it because it was too pretty; didn’t want to write something that I’d regret wasting paper on later. To be fair, there aren’t that many journals at all left, so to get one as nice as this… well, it sure was special.  
But, anyway. I decided that I ought to start writing my story now. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, maybe it’s because of the new people I’ve met and the new things I’ve learned. Whatever it is, I’m here now… so. Let us begin.

I was born in Goodneighbor to George and Lucinda Perkins, on a warm July 30th in the year 2254. George was a drunkard who skipped out on my mother and I before I could even babble properly… or, at least, that’s what my mother always told me. Strange that she seemed to hate him and miss him at the same time, always in this state of restlessness and discontent, like she was waiting for him to come home.  
I think about that now, and… God it makes me so angry! I’ve seen enough of the Commonwealth, I know that things are tough. Hell, my life is (and has been) a walk in the park compared to some other poor saps out there! But for a father to just up and leave - how dare he?! A mother. A child. Not even a year old, still a pest, not keen on how crap the world was… he left my mom alone to try and fend for herself in the sleaziest of all two major cities in the Commonwealth. (This was back when it was really sleazy, before the whole ghoul mess sent tons of good ghouls to Goodneighbor to try and find a new home.)  
My first few years in the city were rough. I know I don’t much look like the type, but I made my living through cruel traps and tricks; taking everything I really needed from others. I had to learn how to defend myself, what with all the druggies and drunkards constantly wandering about. I knew just where I needed to hit a man to make him faint from pain, and I knew just what I needed to do to charm a woman into letting me go.   
My mom, she was real gone at that point… her chem addiction made her as white and weak as death, the alcohol made her just about as put together as the Commonwealth Provisional Government was at that point -- non-functioning. I took care of her and picked up her slack. She wasn’t a bad mom by any means, no sir. She was just… broken. I don’t know her backstory, or what my father did, but someone took that poor woman’s mind and smashed it into a thousand little pieces, and I spent my whole childhood trying to pick up those pieces and put her back together again.   
She had her good days and her bad… there were days where she was awake and cheery, where she taught me how to cook a good meal, where we went scavenging in the wastes together, mother and daughter, a force to be reckoned with. There were days when she stood between me and some creep and smacked the bastard to hell and back, then held me and sung to me while I closed my eyes and listened to the elusive, rare, and beautiful sound of her voice. Then, there were days where she couldn’t even look at me, where she lay in bed all day and cried and whimpered and refused to acknowledge my existence even as I brushed her long, knotted hair. The worst days were days when she thought everyone - including me - was out to hurt her… ‘cause I couldn’t comfort her without her screeching and scratching at me.  
But regardless of her tendencies, I never once blamed her for hurting me. Why would someone hate the abused instead of the abuser?

One day, when I went back to my mom’s shanty shack after a rough tromp through the attics of an old store downtown, I saw Nick sitting at my doorstep. I was… 10, maybe 9. I’ll never forget the look on his face - marginally less scary back then as it is now (sorry Nick!) - when he saw me, dirty rags, scraped knees and all. He said that my mother was gone, that they found her outside of Diamond City with a note in her hand (and a bullet in her brain). Nick pulled the note out of his pocket and handed it to me.  
It was dirty, yellow, crinkled, and speckled with brown dots of dried blood. The detective had folded it neatly into a small square, and I shoved it safely into my pocket to look at later. I met Nick’s eyes and really noticed for the first time that this man was a synth… but not a scary one, not one of the broken clockwork dolls that wander the wasteland - instead, a tired, sad synth, with a brow furrowed so that it looked like he was gonna cry (even though he couldn’t). The first thing I said to him, without even acknowledging the note, or my mother’s death, or anything, was ‘your eyes are pretty’.   
With that, Nick raised his eyebrows. And with that, I plopped down next to him and put my head in my hands. I knew this was gonna happen one day, I had been prepared for years, really. But that didn’t make things any easier. Nick put an arm hesitantly around me and brought me close, and I closed my eyes and wondered why things had to be so hard.   
Nick introduced himself as I leaned against him tiredly, saying he was a detective from Diamond City who had been called to check out the case and find the victim’s child - as mentioned on the outside of the note, ‘Ellie’ - age 10 - Goodneighbor’. I didn’t say anything, and after a couple minutes, he stood up and held out a hand - the softer, flesh one - and asked if I was gonna come with him. I didn’t have anything, didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I took it and followed him out of Goodneighbor and on route to the great green jewel of the Commonwealth.   
As we walked hand-in-hand to Diamond City, I checked my pocket and found that my note was gone. When I started crying, Nick pulled me up and carried me, humming soothingly as I fell asleep from exhaustion. 

Nick took me back to his house (it was just a house at that time - the agency is a whole different story) and wrapped me up in some blankets and brought me some noodles. We hadn’t talked a word the whole trip.   
As I sipped the cup, bundled in blankets, sitting on what I presumed to be Nick’s bed, I asked him “why”. Just that one word, “why”.   
He took off his jacket and hat, sat down next to me, and closed his eyes - scrunching up his face - and then let out a shaky breath. His eyes met mine and he shook his head sadly. “I just don’t know.”  
I remember little 10-year-old me, looking up into Nick’s glowing yellow synth eyes, and thinking that I’d never met anyone like him before, so honest, not trying to lie to me and say that everything was gonna be ok or that things were gonna get better.  
He didn’t sugar coat anything, didn’t spew that nonsense that was meant to make me feel better… because he knew it wouldn’t work on me, that my life was too bad to do a complete 360 and become better than it was before. He was just real quiet, and sad.  
I thought to myself, ‘this guy needs help just as much as I do. He’s as alone as I am.’  
And so, since he didn’t say it, I hugged him and told him that everything would be OK, that I was tough, and that he didn’t need to be sad. He hugged me back, hands holding onto my back tight as he rested his forehead and eyes on my little shoulder and sat there, trembling just so slightly that I almost didn’t notice. I patted his back and told him, as he took ragged breaths, that he didn’t need to worry, that I would help. “I’ll help you. I’ll help you…”  
That night I asked him to stay with me when I went to sleep. I was afraid of being alone, and I guess he was too, ‘cause he was still sitting in the same position, holding my hand, when I woke up. 

The rest is history. He got me set up in Diamond City’s school, I got him to let go of the past cases of his - prewar and postwar - that kept him in a dark place with their unhappy endings. He dealt wit me as I became a bratty teen and called him hurtful names, and I, when I was old enough to get a grip on myself, turned his house into the agency, with a neon sign and everything.  
We made a good pair, him and I. I was only supposed to stay with him until he found me a new family - there was no shortage of childless parents in the Commonwealth - but I ended up sticking around. And so I’m still here, working with Nick, 13 years later or so… and I wouldn’t change that for the world. 

Maybe I should ask Nick about that note…?

-Ellie Perkins

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to give an unloved character a little bit of story. All she ever says is that "I was born/raised in Goodneighbor"... and it got me wondering.  
> I'm probably not going to make any other entries in Ellie's journal, I just wanted to establish her childhood and how she and Nick met.


End file.
